Even though you’re crunched for time, a personal assistant isn’t really in the budget when you’re bootstrapping your business. Use these tools to simplify your life.
By Megan Tichonevicz
Everyone deserves their own personal assistant. With busy lives, careers and families, it’s almost too much for one person to juggle! Well, don’t worry — there are ways to be your own personal assistant without having it being a full-time job! These are some of my secrets that I’d like to share to make your everyday life a little bit easier and a lot more fun!
1. Unroll.me website
I have my Gmail account hooked up to this website and it has made such a difference in my email organization. It creates an Unroll.me folder for all of your junk/promotional emails. Every time you get a new commercial email, Unroll.me will give you the option to “keep this email address coming to my inbox,” to “automatically add this email address to my unroll.me folder,” or “unsubscribe from this email address completely.” It has seriously made my email so much more organized and so easy to view, cutting down major time and energy.
2. Subscription Box Services
Get new or desired items delivered straight to your house. Use services like Birchbox, Julep and Ipsy for beauty products; Hatchery for unique cooking ingredients and spices; Dejamor to spice up your love life; and The Trendy Box for new jewelry. There are so many more types out there too. No work or fuss involved!
3. Red Stamp
This is a GREAT app for personalized e-cards and e-vites. There are so many different templates to choose from and they’re all totally customizable. Even add photos and your own custom text. They can save to your camera roll, post to social media and print beautifully. In the past, I’ve even printed them out and mailed them in place of a card. The photos add a super personal touch and every card literally takes just minutes to create.
4. The Social Radio
A must for the social media lover who is a multi-tasking pro. Hook this app to your Twitter account and The Social Radio will read, out-loud, your home news feed. It’ll even do it over music that you select! This app is great for driving and will totally keep you up to date on all of the Twitter happenings.
5. News 360
This app allows you to choose what kind of news stories you’re interested in. For example, I’m interested in Social Media, Health, Technology, Good News, Movies, Arts, Startups and Employment. Then it builds your daily news articles around those topics. The articles show up perfectly on mobile devices and are easy to save and share. Definitely a must for someone with a busy lifestyle who wants to stay up to date on current events.
6. Songza
I call this app/website my “Music Concierge.” Enter what time of day it is (i.e. Saturday Afternoon) and what you want the music for (i.e. Relaxing at Home, Driving, Doing Housework, Entertaining Friends, etc.) Lastly, choose a music category (i.e. Sweet Soul Music, Funky Electronic Grooves, R&B hits, etc.) and Songza will provide you with appropriate playlists to listen to! It does a great job at matching your mood and activities with the perfect music. It’s basically, your own personal DJ.
7. Wantist.com
A great website for gifting ideas. It starts with a blanket statement of “I’m looking for something for someone.” From there, you use drop down boxes to customize the “something” and the “someone.” For example, I could say “I’m looking for something PRACTICAL for someone ARTISTIC.” or “I’m looking for something ROMANTIC for someone FUN-LOVING.” And in seconds, Wantist will give you different gift options/ideas that would be appropriate.
8. Sugarwish
This service is perfect for last-minute gifts or to send a guy instead of flowers. All you do is log onto the site and choose your gift option. I like the Petite Sugarwish — four 1/4 pound bags of candy for $25 (all taxes, fees and s&h included.) Then, it sends a personalized e-card to the recipient saying something like “Megan just sent you a Sugarwish. Choose your options now.”
Next, the recipient goes to the website and chooses from over 100 different candy options. Within two days, the fresh, perfectly packaged candy they chose will be delivered straight to their door! It’s easy, personal and perfect for last minute gifts or for that friend who has everything. I send these to my boyfriend all the time.
9. EasilyDo
You may have used apps before to manage your social media, or to give you real-time traffic updates, or perhaps to even keep track of your purchases and reservations. But EasilyDo does it all in one!
The app connects to social media, email, calendar, contacts, GPS and more. You can completely customize it to send you alerts about things like Facebook posts, weather, traffic, and calendar events. Since downloading this app nine months ago, EasilyDo has saved me over seven hours by helping me do things like merge duplicated contacts, wish my Facebook friends a happy birthday, and add contact information from my emails, all at the touch of a button, LITERALLY!
I have used each one of these personally and they have ALL made my life easier in one way or another. So do yourself a favor and save yourself a lot of time and energy by becoming your very own assistant; YOU DESERVE IT!
What’s your favorite productivity hack?
This post originally appeared on the Easily Do Blog.
